Question About Operation of Small Government

It's unfair that some people are born blind, should we blind everyone to create a level playing field? We provide a taxpayer funded education system for all citizens, and even many non-citizens. Many legal immigrants that I know personally came to the U.S. with little education at all, many with just a 3rd grade education, and I don't know of any of them who is out of work even now. Fairness is relevant to ones view, which doesn't equate to right or wrong as you wish to make it.

A difference of opinion, the market is free to me in that I am free to shop where I wish, making or refusing to purchase of my own free will. When you use the term "free market" are you expecting everything to be available without cost?

Regulations can make things much more costly.

"I don't find a free market to be so unfair." That actually requires an explanation? I see something I want, I make a decision to buy or not based on cost and/or need. What should I find unfair? Or more to the point, what is it you find to be unfair?

 

Nothing wrong with that. The private sector produces both jobs and services with the intent of making a profit. Competition allows the consumer to make choices and control prices by pitting competition against one another in a way that maintains the bottom line. Government can perform the same functions, but when it does it eliminates any competition and can continue to operate at a loss perpetually as the National debt shows.

How do we bring in profit and loss in apprehending criminals? We don't.

Most everything government SHOULD be doing results in no profit at all, but at a cost that ALL citizens, or at least a vast majority, should find acceptable.

That's what charity is for.

In my opinion a much better place.

Accountable indeed. Everything government does ends up being paid for, or promised to be paid for, by the taxpayers, and many generations of them yet to be born. Since you're such a stickler on fairness, is it fair for government to be creating enormous sums of debt for those yet to be born?

 

Indie

Again you come back with a petulant and snotty remark rather than a serious reply and what’s more it isn’t even an original petulant and snotty remark – you’ve said virtually the same thing before – “So you're saying that if one child is born sightless, should every newborn be blinded to eliminate the unjustified advantage?”
So I’ll give you virtually the same reply -
OK let us take the example of a child being born blind.

In a society with little or no assistance such a child born into a family without the facilities to help it is unlikely to fair well. In the past and in some societies today such people often ended up on the streets begging. However a child born into a family in such a system with the resources (money, time and education) such a child could prosper.

Now in Britain because of the National Health Service many such problems are spotted early and also because of the NHS medical help (or remedy) can usually be given.
Also the family can get professional help from such things as Social Services with bringing up the child, supplying help with home improvements, access to educational material (and training for cares), mobility training and a host of other things that wouldn’t be available without government assistance.

It doesn’t matter where or to whom the blind child is born in such a system they can all be given a chance to prosper.

Now from what I can tell the system you’d seem to want would be a lot closer to the first example than the second.”

 

Indie

School financing in the US, based on local property taxes, cuts down on social mobility with more advantaged parents moving neighbourhoods to get there children into good schools. Also such parents have the resources to afford private tuition for their children, if they are needed.
In her book ‘The Age of American Unreason’ (I’ve recommended it to you before) Susan Jacoby points out that the devolving of education to local authorities meant that “children in the poorest areas of the country would have the worst school facilities and teachers with the worst training”
Basically the US education system is broken -
“In the most powerful nation on earth, one adult in five believes the sun revolves around the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map; two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15 year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD”

 

Indie

LOL

So you are now honestly claiming that to you any mention of ‘free market’ ideas only, wholly and solely brings to mind that you can shop for stuff?

Honestly that’s it?

Are you that naive, are you that ill informed? Or are you just pretending to be dumb because you’ve discovered your ideas don’t stand up well to a bit of scrutiny?

You have even said you are a free market supporter are you saying all you meant was that you liked to shop like one of the girls off Sex and the City?

 

There are hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the Federal government, with strings attached, in addition to the state funding. I don't think the problem with getting a good education is due to lack of funding at all. Better teachers, local control, and less federal government involvement would produce much better results.

That's her opinion.

Don't always believe what you read from polls. Some of those results would appear to indicate we have a problem with the teachers and/or the course material mandated by the Federal government. More money doesn't magically result in smarter students.

 

Accidental post (meant to post this in a new thread)

 

A libertarian small state would play a purely managerial role regarding the 'management' of security of its citizens, property and businesses, and would act as an overseer to ensure contracts are fairly and dutifully executed. Beyond that, it would be laissez faire. It would not for example, take any interesting in governing peoples lives as both socialism, liberal reformism, social democracy and neoconservatism would - these systems like to deliver advice, mediate and influence, control and police, regulate citizens lives, thoughts and feelings through medico-moral frameworks among other things, and utilises the Benthamite Panopticon to secure its hegemony over the body politic [which is affiliated with the Hobbesian notion of the Sovereign having control over the bodies and 'blood' of its subjects].